Esteban Ocon

Coureur #31

Biografie

Esteban Ocon re-joins Renault DP World F1 Team ahead of the 2020 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, marking his return to a full-time race seat after a year lay-off in 2019. Esteban is well known to the Renault family having spent the 2016 season as the team’s Reserve Driver, and, prior to that, was part of the Enstone-based Lotus junior programme during which he won the FIA European Formula 3 title in 2014. A year later Esteban won the GP3 Series crown. At just 23-years-old, Esteban has already completed 50 Grands Prix with a best finish of fifth achieved twice in Spain and Mexico in 2017 on the way to a career-best eighth place in the Drivers’ Championship that season.

Previous Championships

2019

Esteban was Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team’s Reserve Driver for the 2019 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season. In December he officially completed his handover to Renault, where he featured in the two-day post-Abu Dhabi test in the Renault R.S.19.

2018

Esteban finished his second full season in Formula 1 with Force India (later, Racing Point) in twelfth place in the Drivers’ standings. In Belgium, Esteban enjoyed his best-ever Formula 1 qualifying performance by clinching third on the grid in a tricky, wet-dry session behind Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.

2017

In 2017, Esteban finished a career-best eighth in the Drivers’ Championship in his first full year in Formula 1 with Force India.

2016

Esteban began the 2016 season as Renault Sport F1 Team’s Reserve Driver, taking part in four FP1 sessions. Later that year, he was handed his Formula 1 debut as a 19-year-old when he replaced Manor Racing’s Rio Haryanto from the Belgian Grand Prix. Esteban finished the remainder of the season with Manor before landing a full-time race seat with Force India for the following year.

Between his debut in Belgium and the 2017 Mexican Grand Prix, Esteban set an all-time Formula 1 record for the most consecutive finishes with 27 straight races without a retirement.

2015

Esteban made the step to the GP3 Series on the Formula 1 support bill. He won the title as a rookie.

2014

Esteban made his mark in junior single-seater racing with a scintillating rookie year in the FIA European Formula 3 Championship where he won the championship ahead of an impressive field, which included current Formula 1 drivers Max Verstappen and Antonio Giovinazzi. On the back of his title triumph, Esteban, a Lotus junior at the time, appeared in FP1 for Lotus F1 Team at the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

2012 – 2013

Following on from his success in karting, Esteban enjoyed a first taste of single-seaters in 2012 in the Formula Renault Eurocup and Formula Renault Alps series.

Karting

Esteban began karting in 2006 in the French Minime Championship winning the series in 2007. In 2008, he beat compatriots Anthoine Hubert and Pierre Gasly to the French Cadet Championship before spending three years in the KF3 series, winning in 2010, before finishing runner up in the WSK Euro Series in 2011.